


Rescue

by Fierceawakening



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: M/M, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 09:59:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fierceawakening/pseuds/Fierceawakening
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is hurt/comfort made into something not only one-sided but completely awful. It's me twisting Skyfire/Starscream into something horrifying.This is not Skyfire as presented in canon or as I usually see him. This is a completely creepy Skyfire who does awful things. This is also me giving Starscream PTSD as realistically and as gut-wrenchingly as I can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> Years ago when I first started reading fic at FFN, I stumbled across a fic where the Autobots capture Starscream and Sunstreaker and Sideswipe force gentle, "loving" attentions on Starscream. I don't know what the author really intended by it -- I've seen remarks that suggest that she meant it to be questionable -- but in it, Starscream gradually comes to be happy with the Autobots because they've "rewritten the rules." By the end, he seems not twisted by Stockholm Syndrome, but honestly "saved" by ministrations that clearly begin as nonconsensual. It was so well-written a fic with so confusing and horrifying a premise to me that it's stayed in my mind for years. I've always wanted to write some kind of an answer to that story.
> 
> So this is what "Starscream with the rules changed" would look like to me, drawn on my own experiences as someone who actually has PTSD. (Full disclosure: My own trauma was not sexual, so some of that is not drawn from my experiences.) 
> 
> I've found it to be fairly rare in this fandom that people write disassociation and derealization realistically, so there's a pretty heavy focus on that, drawn from what that's been like for me personally. I hope it feels vivid and real.

Starscream picked at the fresh red brand burnt into his wing. His blue fingers trembled, twitching in erratic, nervous rhythm. Pain flared through his sensornet and through his wings.

The pain reassured him. It reminded him that this was real. Finally, after so long, his wings weren’t blank any more. Finally, all this would be over.

Skyfire had said so.

A lifetime ago, he would have had something to say about that. Maybe he would have taunted Skyfire, asking the big white mech with bitter, cutting words if he really thought he could outfly the Seekers of Vos.

Maybe he wouldn’t have mocked Skyfire at all.

After all, he was Starscream. No side with him on it could lose. Not in the end, anyway.

Not even his own.

His shuddered hard at the the thought. He wasn’t supposed to have it. If he had thoughts he wasn’t supposed to have —

He didn’t used to think like that. Or had he? He couldn’t remember. He remembered a smirking face, a mocking voice, and he thought they’d been his but he couldn’t really remember, not now, not any more.

He could remember Skyfire. White and red and more blinding expanses of white, like the snow where Skyfire had said Starscream had found him, the massive mouth leaning to whisper into Starscream’s audio receptors, the sound too loud, shivering through Starscream’s whole frame as though it was real and he was not.

It reached him everywhere.

It always said the same thing.

“You saved me so I could save you.”

And then the massive lips would kiss him and he’d shudder and he’d feel Skyfire smile.

“See?” he’d say. “I know you’re still in there, Starscream. I know you’re waiting for me, underneath all the bitterness. Underneath all the things he did. I know I’ll reach you. Someday.” 

And then Skyfire would leave, and Starscream would still be shivering.

It had disgusted him at first, Starscream knew. Back when there’d been something to disgust.

He looked down at his shoulders. He could still see guns, still feel the hot energy pulsing through them, the desire to destroy. It would feel good to fight, finally. It would feel good to see something burn.

Or at least, he hoped it would. A lifetime ago, that heat had warmed him. It had filled every part of him, curling through his circuitry, crackling through his spark.

He’d been made of fire, then.

_Underneath the things he did —_

He remembered that, too, and his valve spasmed hard.

“Megatron,” he moaned, wondering whether the word was a curse or a plea.

They’d fought. He’d been a fighter. A warrior, like Megatron had been.

Was. Still was. Megatron was alive, and real, and Starscream would see him again, from the wrong side of the battlefield — no, the right one, he knew now, he understood, he’d promised —

He’d been fearless, as free with his words as with his null ray fire, and the blows and kisses that had rained down on his frame had only made him feel all the more alive. They’d grappled that way until they were spent, a massive silver spike driven to the hilt inside him —

He shuddered again, doubling over, retching, feeling he’d suddenly purge his tanks. He’d wanted that, once. Now he wanted nothing. He didn’t want anyone to touch him. Never again. Not since —

It was ridiculous, he knew. Skyfire had always been so gentle.

Skyfire would never hurt him that way.

That was what he always said, the big jet’s massive fingers rubbing gently over his wings, warm and hypnotic, lulling him into calmness in spite of himself, forcing his fire to cool.

Skyfire’s fingers were too big to fit inside him, after all, and Skyfire had said it was probably better that way, because of the things Megatron had done. Skyfire had said Starscream would be fragile.

His valve had been dented when Skyfire had found him, scratched and abraded from Megatron forcing his way in the night before. And Skyfire had leaned down to soothe the sting with his massive glossa, licking gently, and —

Starscream’s arms raised automatically, energy roiling through his weapons systems, his dark face twisted into a grotesque snarl.

“You saved me so I could save you,” Skyfire had said.

And “I’m here.”

And “I’ll never leave you again.”

And “Please. Let me touch you. Let someone touch you who won’t hurt you. Please.”

Starscream had threatened to kill him. Starscream had screamed so loud his vocalizer had shorted.

And that night and the night following and every night after: “Shh, shh, I’m here, I’m here.”

Until he had calmed. Until it had soothed him. Until he froze when the fingers and glossa moved on him, feeling, checking: You’re almost healed. You’ll be all right. I know why you’re pulling away, but you don’t have to.

_You don’t belong to him._

_You don’t have to pretend you’re his any more._

Starscream lowered his arm, his processor reeling. Skyfire had saved him — hadn’t he? Those soothing touches — he’d learned to endure them.

He didn’t want Skyfire to touch him. He didn’t want anyone to touch him, ever again. He’d threatened to kill anyone who tried.

But his voice hadn’t been his own. The medic who fixed him kept saying it was, but he knew better. They must have given him a new one. He knew because he sounded like someone else.

It didn’t matter what someone else said. It didn’t matter how he protested, because that new voice wasn’t his own anyway, and Skyfire always came for him. No matter what. And Skyfire told him what was happening, and Skyfire told him why.

Until he’d stopped pulling away when Skyfire reached for him.

That was good, wasn’t it? That was right —

He doubled over again, fighting a wave of disgust. The Starscream he’d once been would never doubt himself, and never fail to talk — and shoot — when he thought something wasn’t right. The Starscream he’d once been would never let anyone touch him unless he’d won the privilege.

Whatever he’d become was exactly what he deserved to be.

And there was one proof of it, greater than any other, one thing Skyfire reminded him of every day:

“Megatron cares nothing for you, Starscream. If you had been frozen in the ice, as I was — would he have come for you?”

And that was it. The thing that meant Skyfire was right. That he belonged here. That those things he’d so long fought against were that strange, mysterious thing Skyfire kept saying they were, a thing he would teach Starscream, a thing Starscream would understand when he learned to stop fighting: a thing called _love._

A thing he said Megatron would never feel.

Which explained why he hadn’t come.

Why Starscream didn’t matter, and never had, and why Starscream wore the mark of Megatron’s enemies, now.

He’d fought at first, of course. At first, he’d denied he even wanted that at all: “I don’t need Megatron to make you pay for this.” But then: “When Megatron finds me.” “It doesn’t matter what you do. I’m his. He’ll make you pay.”

_You don’t belong to him._

_You don’t belong to anyone._

He moved his hand off of his wing. A thin trickle of energon oozed from the brand where his fingertips had dug into it.

The pain felt good, like Megatron’s hands had once, twisting at it, his optics bright as Starscream laughed and taunted him to do it harder. The pain felt _real._

And this would be real. This battle.

He’d see them again, finally. He’d see their faces. He’d see whether he was the stranger to them that he had become to himself.

Skyfire had said they wouldn’t come for him. Skyfire had said _he_ wouldn’t come for him. Skyfire had said today’s battle was over the same thing they always fought over. Energy. Resources. Power.

It wasn’t about him. It could never be about him. Decepticons didn’t do that kind of thing. He’d been a Decepticon once and he’d known whether or not that was true, but that mech he’d been was someone else, someone he couldn’t remember, someone he couldn’t reach and never would again.

All he had was Skyfire. And he didn’t need saving, because Skyfire had already saved him.

_You saved me so I could save you._

It had to be true. Skyfire was an Autobot, and Autobots didn’t lie. They didn’t know how.

He’d known how, once. He’d been a Decepticon. But he was an Autobot now, and the words that other Starscream would have said held no meaning any longer. They were sounds, like the strange things that came out of this vocalizer that didn’t feel like it was his.

He’d see Megatron again, finally, at the end of this mist of distance, this nothing that had swallowed him up, this ice in his spark that held him fast like the ice that had once held Skyfire.

He’d know.

Maybe Megatron would see through it. Maybe Megatron would take him back, broken as he was. Maybe he’d tear off the things on Starscream’s wings and the pain would be real and it would be like waking up and if he did, it wouldn’t matter whether he healed or not, whether he remembered who he was or became someone else entirely.

Because he’d know that there was something else and that he’d known what it was, somewhere in the mist of a previous life.

Or Megatron would know that he was dead already and that dead things shouldn’t talk and fly and move and shoot and Megatron would have the closest thing he’d ever had to pity and kill him, and this living death would finally end.

Starscream smiled, a ghastly half-grimace.

Either way, this would finally be over.


End file.
